Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Modify the Toolbox Reports in Civil 3D

Here's a solution to a problem we often encounter: The ability to modify the reports that are presented to us by the Civil 3D Toolbox.

Let's say we have a Pipe Network and we want to create a Pipe report. The standard version of this report includes both center-to-center and edge-to-edge distances.

We don't want that. We want only center-to-center in our report. How do we do that?

How to eliminate the text "edge-to-edge" from the report's column heading.

Make a copy of your existing "Pipes Only.xsl" file, typically found in C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\C3D 2018\enu\Data\Reports\xsl

Open the xsl file with Notepad.

Find (Ctrl + F) the text: edge-to-edge

Delete the line from the file. The effect is that the text from the column heading will be eliminated. In the case above, the text is being removed from the report if the display unit is foot and the length type is 2D. If you want to eliminate the text from all reports, including metric and 3D, continue searching for that string and deleting until there are no more. Save the file but do not close Notepad.

How to eliminate the edge-to-edge value from the data field.

If you were to perform only the step described above, you would get rid of the text from the report heading, but the edge to edge value would still be displayed in the data fields of the report.

Go back to the top of the file, click your cursor, and now search for string(landUtils:CC2EE

Eliminate or comment out the entire line. To comment the line out, inside the < bracket, type !--. At the right end of the line inside the > bracket, type: --

Using this technique, delete, or comment-out, the two lines indicated by arrows, above. This will eliminate the edge to edge distance. Do the same step in the 3D length type section. Save the file and exit Notepad.

Go back to Civil 3D and run the report again.

What if you want to keep the original report style, but make a new style that will also be available on the Toolbox?
Close Civil 3D for this step.

Don't use the process above on the Pipes Only.xsl file. Make a copy, name it appropriately. We will use Pipes Only cen-to-cen.xsl for our example.Make the changes above in the new file.

Now, browse to C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\C3D 2018\enu\Data\ToolBox and locate the file called ToolBoxCfg.xml.

Edit that file using Notepad. Search for Category name="Pipes"

Copy and Paste one the line with You will have duplicate lines:

Now, change the tool name to one of your choosing. Scroll along the same line and find where it specifies the execute file. Put in the correct name of your modified xsl file.

Save and close the file.

Open Civil 3D. On the Toolbox tab, find your Pipes report area. If you don't see your new report style, right click on the Pipes heading and Refresh.

About Me

Timothy Corey is the owner of Delta Engineering Systems in Redding, CA.
Delta Engineering Systems is an Autodesk Authorized Value-Added Reseller focusing on civil engineering and mapping applications.
The company was founded in 1989.